Barnicoat on Pole for Carlin at The Bend

Ben Barnicoat put Thunderhead Carlin Racing on pole position for this weekend’s second round of the Asian Le Mans Series at The Bend Motorsport Park.

The Brit survived a wild off-track moment early in the 15-minute session to claim the top spot in the No. 45 Dallara P217 Gibson with a 2:35.698, two-tenths ahead of the next best car.

Nick Cassidy snatched second in the Eurasia Motorsport Racing New Zealand Ligier JS P217 Gibson with a late improvement, pipping Roman Rusinov in the G-Drive Racing by Algarve Oreca-based Aurus 01 Gibson, who settled for third.

Inter Europol’s Mathias Beche and Roberto Mehri in the second of the Eurasia Motorsport cars rounded out the top five.

Pole-sitter Barnicoat will share the Thunderhead Carlin Racing machine with Jack Manchester and Harry Tincknell.

Pole in LMP2 Am Trophy, which is reserved for previous generation cars, went to RLR MSport’s Arjun Maini.

Davide Rigon in the HubAuto Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 beat the Car Guy Ferrari of Come Ledogar to pole position in the GT ranks with a 2:56.109 on his final flying lap.

Jens Klingmann put the Astro Veloce Motorsports BMW M6 GT3 into third a further 1.5 seconds back.

LMP3 went the way of Nielsen Racing’s No. 2 Norma M30 Nissan of Colin Noble who improved on his own time late in the session to end up with a 2:50.802.

Alessandro Bressan popped up to second aboard the ACE1 Villorba Corse Ligier JS P3 Nissan, while Graff’s David Droux was baulked by traffic on his final flying lap and had to settle for third.

There was a brief red flag in LMP3 qualifying after the No. 3 Nielsen Racing Norma stopped on track in the hands of Garett Grist, while the LMP2 session also had a short red flag period reportedly for debris.

Sunday’s race is set to get underway at 1 p.m. local time.

RESULTS: Qualifying